The Blythe now found itself on its assigned patrol with the Sacremento, a flight of fighters from the Farragut and its own Danubes(one fitted with a sensor pod, the other with a micro torpedo launcher).

“Since we’re at a permanent state of yellow alert during the open bar policy in Cetacean Ops centre is hereby temporarily suspended. The pool will however remain open. That is all, carry on.” LCdr Mee IH squeeked into the comm. His shift was about over, and Captain Tyler and the rest of Alpha shift would soon be arriving. They were about halfway finished their 5 hour patrol.

Their mission was simple, since long range sensors were near useless further into the system the closer they got to the giant pulsar the worse it got. But short range sensors out to about 1.5 AUs were still functional. So they were going to sweep the inner system with the fighters and runabouts sweeping the asteroid belt and the Sacremento sweeping the interior area, and the Blythe sweeping the area of the system just outside the belt. The patrol would move from coreward to to rimward following the half circle section of the system on the Federation side of the border.

So far they had not got any sensors hits, and their long ranger sensors were heavily distorted by the pulsar. The source of the power emissions and the collection of Tholian ships were on the other side of Rhontaka A(large G type) currently. They would be at their closest range to the Tholians near the end of their patrol in a few hours. With Rhontaka 1’s(large Venus type planet) current orbital position, that would place the Sacremento roughly 1.6 AUs away.

“Greetings sir. Situation normal, everything’s groovy.” Mee IH squeeked as the Captain and a few other members of Alpha shift arrived.

“Thank you commander. How are the rest of the ships doing.” As the senior officer present on the patrol, he was notionally in charge, though the fighter element would be led by the flight leader as an attachment from the Farragut.

“One of the Danubes thought they saw a ship, but it turned it to just be an asteroid that was super rich in duranium…oh, and the Sacremento spotted one of them huge space maggot thingies. They asked it if it had seen any Tholians on this side of the system using the same harmonic frequencies the big E-D used about 37 years ago…as of yet, no response sir” the pygmy beluga squeeked. As he hovered over over to his pool opening and popped himself in by shutting down his flipper mounted repulsors.

“You mean the space wha…” he instantly understood why the Second Officer had referred to it as a space maggot instead of the colloquial term.

“Hmmm, you caught yourself. Yeah they are taxonomically and biologically more closely linked to ship sized maggots. Thanks though sir, maybe you’re not a speciesist piece of shit after all.” He squeeked and then churled which substituted in cetaceans for laughter.

“Kidding of course sir. Catch yall later.” Mee IH lept out of the pool and then reentered nose first, heading back to his quarters.

((Tholian Space Station, Rhontaka 1))

The citizens scientiest reviewed the calculations one final time. This was it. Time was nearly up, if he couldn’t create a find a way to deal with terminal shockwave which would let ships through at the other end of the artificial wormhole, then the Admiral would pull his fleet out and abandon the station. And the scientists all consuming work that he had pursued so diligently for over 40 years would go down the drain.

He would prove that his former scientific collaborator and friend Telera Khan had been wrong all those years ago. Through his years of research he had identified 3 key problems that led prior experiments to be doomed to fail. But now new technology and his own keen insights on subspace dynamics, gravitational etties, soliton flux and his intense years of studying wormholes of all shapes, sizes and kinds had led him to this point.

He walked out into the control centre of the small space station and ordered his team to initiate the Subspace Tunneling Penetrator as he had called his new device. They had made the wormholes work a few days ago. But each test probe had been destroyed while reaching the terminus point. This time, he was sure it would work.

A mere 4 minutes later he was proven right. It had worked, and there probe had made it through. He then almost gleefully signalled the Admiral and informed him that he could begin sending his ships through one at a time. The terminus point had been shifted since the last experiment to keep the Sheliak from knowing where they would come from. This new wormholes terminus was a mere 30 lightyears away from Shelia itself.

((Feer’hat Command Deck))

Admiral Grishak recieved the message from the station and turned to gaze out the viewport for a few seconds before tapping in commands on his console, signaling the main assault force of nearly 100 ships to proceed to his location. That main force had actually been parked 5 light years away on the far side of the pulsar, deeper into Tholian territory, masked by the heavy distortions that were causing the sensor issues for the Federation ships.

The Tholians were having the sensor troubles. But it was their territory and they had solid maps and this mission didn’t need sensors. It had needed the scientist to succeed, and he finally had. His scouts along the border had informed him about the Sheliack fleet massing near the triborder junction. Little did they know, he and his fleet were going to be striking at the heart of Corporate within 3 days, the Sheliak had taken the bait, and the Starfleeters had so far been kept at bay.

Just then a comm came in from a flight of weavers near the Fed border only 2 AU from his location near the station. They reported 2 large and 6 small Starfleet vessels approaching the border near them.

At that range they may spot the wormhole even with wonky sensors. Grishak pondered for a moment. He needed to scare them off, but avoid a war. So he ordered the weavers to lie in ambush in the asteroid belt and told them to attack the nearest vessel with torpedos from their side of the border then withdraw immediately.

((5 minutes later, Blythe Bridge))

Ingram literally shouted from the tactical console. “Sir, 3 Tholian ships emerging from the asteroid belt, the are moving towards the Sacremento.”

What happened next took only 39 seconds. 3 Tholian torpedos struck the starboard side of the Sacremento. She luckily had her shield up, but the blow had overloaded and blown out her starboard shield emitter array and ruptured several EPS manifolds fed the main deflector array. They only suffered 2 wounded, but the ship would need a Starbase to capable of installing a new emitter array.

After a mad scramble support the now damaged ship, the other vessels on the patrol found that the Tholians had withdrawn…and that they had fired the torpedos from their side of border. It was a hair raising finish to an otherwise uneventful patrol.

The incident had happened mere moments before the patrol was going to head back to the Starfleet rally point behind the Rhontak B(that area was specifically chosen, since sensors operated better from there and it also hid their true numbers from the Tholians, or so they hoped. The patrol withdraw and filed their report with the Flagship. The Sacremento though was sent back to SB 420 for repairs and would need atleast 10 in a dock.

Prologue

And just like that, its had gone from 6 Starfleet ships versus 20ish, to 5 versus 180ish potentially. Still though Starfleet Command kept as much of a lid on the situation as they could. With the Sheliak communique, it became fairly clear that this wasn’t a Federation concern. Though within a few days they would reassign a Heavy Escort Group of 5 ships who was en route to the Gorn border to Starbase 420 instead. Just in case. They would arrive in about two and a half weeks.